The green surge that crushed Bengal's 34-year-old Red citadel in 2011 continues to swamp the countryside, but is just short of a clean sweep.
KOLKATA: The green surge that crushed Bengal's 34-year-old Red citadel in 2011 continues to swamp the countryside, but is just short of a clean sweep.
Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress decimated the Left in south Bengal, but met with hurdles in the north, where the Congress and the Left were ahead of the ruling party in Jalpaiguri, Uttar Dinajpur, Malda and Murshidabad. The projected Lok Sabha tally extrapolated from the grassroots would put Trinamool's seats at 27 out of 42, a prospect that would give Mamata bargaining power in national politics.
However, the Trinamool victory came without any contest in 15% of the gram panchayats seats, where rival candidates were not allowed to even file their nominations. In another 10% seats, the party fought rebels who contested as Independents.
Going by the trend, the Trinamool is likely to bag 13 of the 17 zilla parishads. The triangular fight between it, former ally Congress and CPM has made the result of the remaining four zilla parishads uncertain. The same is true of another 250-odd gram panchayats.
Dubbing the results a "a victory of the people and democracy", the chief minister lauded people for voting at a difficult time "of heat, rains and the ongoing Ramzan". "We should respect the verdict and behave in a peaceful manner," Mamata said. She also predicted that her party would garner 75% of the votes and win in 13 districts while the Congress and the CPM would grab one each. In the two districts of North Dinajpur and Malda, the outcome would be hung where the Trinamool would play the balancing factor, she said.
She said a few constitutional bodies had acted against her government but she had respect for those entities. The Trinamool chief will now dedicate the victory to the people of rural Bengal on August 21, which would be observed as Martyr's Day this year instead of the traditional July 21.
As the trends of the panchayat poll results show, both the Congress and the Trinamool have suffered by going it alone. Compared with the 2011 Assembly polls, the Congress vote share is down to 7% with eroding bases in Malda, Jalpaiguri and Uttar Dinajpur. The Congress managed to queer the Trinamool's pitch to the Left's advantage in many places such as Nadia and North 24-Parganas and in the north Bengal districts of Malda and Jalpiaguri. The Trinamool made inroads into Cooch Behar and is all set to wrest the zilla parishad that has been with the Left since 1978. It also managed to overcome anti-incumbency in South 24-Parganas and East Midnapore, the two zilla parishads the party had won in 2008.
Apart from benefitting from the Congress-Trinamool split, the Left has improved its show in South 24-Parganas, Nadia and North 24-Parganas when compared with the 2011 Assembly polls. But in the five South Bengal district of Burdwan, Hooghly, West Midnapore, Bankura and Birbhum it faces a near rout. This is the trouble zone that has taken centrestage in Bengal's gory politics since 2000.
In some areas — former CPM minister Sushanta Ghosh's Keshpur and Garbeta in Paschim Midnapore, CPM leader Anil Basu's turf Arambag, Khanakul and Tarakeswar in Hooghly, most gram panchayats of Burdwan and adjoining areas of Birbhum — the Left wilted before Trinamool's terror tactics. Ironically, these are the areas where the Trinamool had failed to field candidates a decade back. Even in the 2011 Assembly polls, the Left Front had managed to win the assembly segments here.
Left Front chairman Biman Bose alleged "large-scale malpractices" by the Trinamool with the help of a section of police and State Election Commission agents during counting of votes in Burdwan and Howrah
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